


your star now shines upon me

by valety



Category: Odin Sphere
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, POV Second Person, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-02-01 01:42:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12694446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valety/pseuds/valety
Summary: It turns out Gwendolyn and Oswald still have quite a lot to talk about, mostly re: the existence (or nonexistence) of certain spells.





	your star now shines upon me

**Author's Note:**

> the working title for this was "They Say Good Communication Is The Cornerstone Of Any Successful Relationship" 
> 
> this fic is a couple of months old, but I never got around to posting it. probably because I’m self-conscious about how corny it is? then again, it IS odin sphere
> 
> warnings for references to past emotional neglect/abuse (...but then again, it IS odin sphere)

On the balcony of the castle in Elrit, Gwendolyn stands before you, hand over heart. Taking a slow step forward, she says, “Oswald… I do not mind if my emotions have been caused by a spell. If I can be by your side, I will endure any hardship.”

Her words set something alight in you. You feel as though a heart as battered as your own should not be strong enough to contain the swell of emotion you are experiencing now, and yet somehow, it still beats.

“Until I met you, my heart was empty,” you say. Taking a step forward, you reach for her shoulders and draw her close. Gwendolyn bows her head, looking flustered, and yet she does not pull away. “But now it is different. I have experienced both happiness  _and_  fear. Happiness in experiencing the light that is your love, and fear of losing it—a light that is more precious than life itself.”

At that, Gwendolyn looks up. “It will never disappear,” she declares. “My love will shine like the stars, forever…”

Feeling emboldened, you slip an arm around her waist; she falls into your embrace readily, and you wrap your arms around her as tight as you dare.

“Please…” she whispers, resting her head against your chest. “Don’t let me go…”

In an ideal world, you would never have had to. The moment would have lasted until the stars themselves fell from the sky. But unfortunately, the world you find yourselves in is anything but ideal, and at last you have to say, “While we are here… may I... ask you something?”

“What is it?” 

You loosen your embrace, drawing back so you can meet your wife’s clear-eyed gaze. Furrowing your brow, you ask, “What did you mean, about your emotions being caused by a spell?”

You’re half hoping that you simply misheard her. But she doesn’t laugh, doesn’t ask you what you’re going on about. Instead, looking almost bashful, Gwendolyn replies, “The spell my father cast, of course.”

“The spell,” you repeat.

“The spell,” Gwendolyn confirms.

“The… sleeping spell?”

You fear you already know what her answer will be, and are proven right when she shakes her head and says, “No, the lo–”

“Gwendolyn, did you not  _know?”_   you interrupt. Your urgency causes your grip on her shoulders to tighten unintentionally; you catch yourself and let go, forcing your hands down to your sides instead.

“Know what?” she asks. She’s blushing still, expression innocent, and you think  _oh gods above, she really, truly, does not know._

You close your eyes.

You’re not entirely sure what happens then. All you know is that one moment, thoughts of  _he used me, he used her, he used us both_  crash against you like a storm. The surge of fury that comes with them feels like it could burn you alive from the inside out, but then Gwendolyn has your face cupped between her calloused hands and the sensation overwrites all other thought.

“None of that,” she says firmly. “We have only just returned from the Netherworld. Are you so eager to return?”

Your dark power bleeds away at her touch. It leaves you so quickly, it’s as though she’s drawing it all into herself, but if she is, her face betrays no sign of it. Her gaze remains as steady as ever.

“Forgive me,” you say when you can speak through your haze of rapidly-vanishing anger and sudden, desperate fondness. Your voice is strained. “But Gwendolyn, there  _is_  no spell.”

“Of course there is a spell,” Gwendolyn replies, looking puzzled. Her hands are still cupping your face, but you can’t tell if she’s simply forgotten to remove them or if she does so for the sake of touching you, and that... probably should not be occupying nearly as much of your attention as it is right now. “That is how I fell in love with you. I’m happy, now that I have come to terms with it, and so it does not matter, but… the spell  _is_ why I fell in love with you. Is it not?”

“I don’t… I won’t pretend to know  _why_  you fell in love with me,” you say, now feeling more than a bit flustered yourself. It’s hard not to, when she’s looking at you like that. “But if you indeed love me, then it has nothing to do with a spell. There  _was_ no spell. I heard it from Onyx when he…. ”

You stop. Gwendolyn’s eyes narrow.

“When he what?” she asks.

“That does not matter,” you say quickly. You try and look away, but she holds your head in place. “Let it suffice to say that I had reason to believe him.”

“He  _did_ say something about you making that promise in exchange for letting the ‘matter’ drop quietly,” Gwendolyn continues, utterly ignoring your attempt at glossing over it. “Was there more to that incident? Something neither of you saw fit to tell me?”

“‘Tis… complicated.”

The hands cupping your face suddenly begin to cup much tighter, squeezing until you say “Ow.”

“I deserve to know what happened,” Gwendolyn says. Her voice is like ice. “We cannot keep secrets from each other, not if we are going to do better than those who have been less than honest with  _us.”_

You. Suppose that’s fair.

And so you tell her.

You try and keep your telling as concise as possible. There’s no need for you to dwell on such minor details as what exactly Onyx had to say about what Gwendolyn could do for his reputation, although your attempt at consideration has less to do with some nonexistent desire to cast Onyx in a better light than it does with a desire to preemptively dissuade Gwendolyn from taking up her spear and single-handedly charging Volkenon to challenge the Inferno King to a one-on-one duel for her honour. There’s no doubt in your mind that she would win, but you can’t imagine that it would be a particularly pleasant experience for anyone involved.

You’re partially successful, you think, in that Gwendolyn doesn’t immediately go for her spear, but that admittedly only seems to be because she’s left paralyzed with fury by the time you’ve finished telling her of everything that transpired while she was sleeping.

“That  _horrible_  man—” she snarls. Having now released your face, her hands have instead curled themselves into fists. They’re trembling from how tightly she has them clenched, knuckles white and bloodless. “He had the audacity to act as though it were a… a mere  _disagreement_ that took place between the two of you! Did he think to make a fool of me? How could he attempt to mislead and manipulate me like that if what he claims to feel is love? What sort of love is  _that?!”_

You bite back the cynical  _for some people, that is what love is_ that threatens to surface. Instead you say, “A love that is not worth much at all, I’d say."

“Why does he persist in acting as though he cannot _control_ himself?” Gwendolyn cries. She looks as though she cannot see you, let alone hear you. “As though we owe him pity for his inability to  _grow up?!_  It is not as though he has any  _excuse_  for acting so incapable of restraint...  _he_ is under no spell, and–”

Gwendolyn stops, the colour draining from her face. If she could not see before, she can certainly see you now, for she lifts her head and looks directly at you when she says, “Oh, gods, neither am I.”

Perhaps it would have been kinder to have not said anything at all, you think as you watch her sink to the ground with a low moan, skirts pooling at her feet as she buries her face in her small hands.

You sink to your knees as well, not feeling comfortable continuing to stand while she’s curled up like this. If she wishes to be on the floor, then you will join her on the floor in solidarity. But you’re not sure what to do beyond that. Since the two of you were wed, you have seen Gwendolyn cold, frustrated, and furious by turns, but you have not often seen her in such helpless distress. It frightens you; it feels as though it were your own life being turned upside down. You would give anything to ease it for her.

“Gwendolyn–” you begin.

“You should have told me,” she cuts in, voice thick, still covering her face.  

“I should have,” you agree immediately. “But… I really did believe you  _knew_ already. I was not attempting to conceal anything from you, I swear.”

“What in the world made you think  _that?”_ she asks, and you flinch. Not because of how harsh her tone is, but because you’ve been asking yourself that very same question from the second you realized the truth of the situation moments ago. If she had believed herself to be magically compelled, then a great deal of your earlier interactions suddenly make sense.  

Still. She asked, and a question demands an answer.

“I thought…” you begin. “Gwendolyn, forgive me, but I thought you and your father were... in on it together.”

At that, the valkyrie’s head jerks upright, violet eyes flashing. Had she had Gungnir in hand, the tip would doubtlessly be at your throat. _“What?!”_

“I thought it was one of the Demon Lord’s schemes,” you explain. “That _he_ believed if _I_  believed your love and loyalty were guaranteed, then I would not suspect you of reporting back to him should he call upon you to do so—that because you were his daughter, he...” That because she was his daughter, it had seemed unlikely that he would lie to her the way he’d lied to you and Onyx, you almost say, but then her face falls at the word _daughter_. Definitely not an avenue to go down right now. You should have known better, anyway. You backtrack. “I did not care if you reported back to him, because of course you can do whatever you like! But then everything became…complicated, and....”  

You are well and truly fumbling, now, but are saved when Gwendolyn's expression changes with a sigh.

“You vastly overestimate the relationship I had with my father if you believe I was ever made privy to such plans,” she says, looking and sounding very, very weary. “I was there to obey the king’s commands. I had no will to speak of. Of course he saw no need to reassure me that I would not  _actually_ be under a spell. He was likely counting on my being too stupid to resist, simply because I was told I would not be able to.”

If he ever has the misfortune of running into you again, that Odin is a dead man.

But tearing the Demon Lord apart limb from limb can wait. Right now, his daughter is before you, looking miserable. And so, with all the tenderness you possess—all the tenderness she stirs in you—you say, “I apologize. I know what that feels like. I was first drawn to you because I felt I could empathize with your position. To have been so thoughtless is unforgivable.”

“’Tis not unforgivable,” Gwendolyn says, shaking her head. “You were likely right to be suspicious. That  _does_  sound like something my father would do. And besides, I returned to him so quickly—I have no right to be hurt by you having expected it. I am just... humiliated.”

“Humiliated?”

“I was content to believe I had no choice in the matter,” she explains, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin atop her knees. “I had not simply resigned myself to my fate as a victim of a spell; I was  _happy_ about it. If my feelings were caused by a spell, then how could they be my fault? And when I finally turned my back on everything I ever had, on everything I ever  _was,_  of course I could not be blamed, for that, too, was only the spell. It was a relief, to bear no responsibility for what I’d done.”

You feel a dull throb of hurt at her words—at the idea that she _needed_  an excuse like that to finally feel comfortable loving you—but it vanishes when she adds, “I cannot be angry at you for not thinking to tell me. If I am angry at anyone, it is at myself for clinging so desperately to a lie in the hopes of having my guilt absolved. I am pathetic.”

“You are not pathetic,” you say, and you reach out to her, brushing your fingers against her cheek. “All you wanted was to feel like someone who could make your father proud. Of course you would be relieved to have a reason to forgive yourself once you’d realized the futility of that. Anyone would be.”

Something about that catches Gwendolyn’s attention. Perhaps there is a touch more bitterness in your voice than you’d have liked. But she says nothing—only places a hand over yours, keeping your palm pressed against her cheek.

You’re grateful to her for that.   

She knows very little about your past, still. She knows about your contract; she knows that your father was the one who signed it; she does not know how deeply the hurt goes. She does not know about the years you spent letting yourself be torn apart, convinced that it was love, only for it to all come crashing down around you in one terrible moment.

But you could tell her. She would listen, and she would understand. You are certain of that.

You swallow.

As alien as the feeling is for you, you find that you  _want_ to tell her. Not just because you think she’d understand, but...

Because she'd leaned into your touch earlier, perhaps. Because she seems to draw the poison out of you, sometimes. Because you hadn’t realized it was even possible for you to feel as clean as you do when you're with her. Because she said  _we are going to do better,_ and you want, very, very badly, for that to be true.  

When Gwendolyn finally speaks, it is to say, “I suppose there is quite a lot we do not yet know about each other.”

“I suppose so,” you agree.

“But we have all the time in the world to learn,” she adds. And, with a faint smile, she stands.

With the hand that’s already holding yours, she helps you to your feet, and the two of you are once again facing each other on the terrace of the old castle. It's as though nothing had dared to interrupt your prior perfect moment. 

But then your eyes meet, and Gwendolyn flushes.

“Is something wrong?” you ask.

“Oh, no,” she says, shaking her head. “Nothing is wrong. I am simply realizing that... that I really  _do_  love you. And... that these feelings are my own. They  _must_ be.”

Your cheeks grow warm. You suspect they may be turning red.

“I’m... glad,” you say at last, admittedly somewhat awkwardly.

Gwendolyn laughs. The sound is a rare one. You wish that she would always laugh. “I already knew I did, of course, but my feelings seem to shine even brighter than before, now that I know there is no spell,” she says. Her hands squeeze yours.  _“You_  seem brighter, too.”

You want to say  _I don’t think that’s possible_ —that nothing about you is  _bright_ —but you find that you cannot, not when she’s smiling at you like that _._

All this time, you had been thinking of her as your guiding star. You had not thought that  _you_ could ever be somebody’s light.

It’s a strange thought.

Gwendolyn drops your hands, then, but only to slide her own around your neck and pull your face down towards hers. The movement is a clumsy one, but somehow her mouth finds yours, and yours finds hers, and then the two of you are kissing for the first time since your wedding.

“I am glad there is no spell,” she whispers when you break apart. “I was surprised, but if I am truly free to choose, then there is no one I would rather give my heart to.”

“I have already given you mine,” you say.  

“I promise I will cherish it,” she swears, and you have ever been more sure of anything than in that moment when you think  _I believe you._


End file.
